This year, architect Léon Stynen is in the spotlight in his home city of Antwerp. To coincide with the opening of the retrospective exhibition on 11 October, *Léon Stynen. A Life of Architecture (1899–1990)* is being published. Thanks to its unique historical contributions, contemporary photographic series and thematic essays, the book far surpasses the status of a mere compilation.

Léon Stynen. A Life of Architecture (1899–1990) begins with an overview of his career, from Stynen’s training in 1915 to 1977, the year in which he left his practice. Author Dirk Laureys divides the architect’s life into chapters that reflect the most significant developments, both in his career and in his thinking. “I constructed that beam in concrete and it was a revelation,” says Stynen of the Vander Elst tobacconist’s. Laureys, collection manager of the Flanders Architecture Archive, which has held the archives of both Stynen and Paul De Meyer since 1988, makes good use of such rare writings to offer insight into Stynen’s formative years.